Family Trip day 4: Disneyland!

It was finally Disneyland day!  Everyone did a great job of keeping it a secret from the boys.  Everyone that is except for me!  I had a minor slip up while in Sequoia, but ducked and covered pretty well.  

 I had made Cody a little book to read to Tyler to explain days new adventure. 

 

They were pretty excited once it started to sink in.  I'm not sure the really understood where we were going and what Disneyland actually was.

We finished getting ready and walked over to catch our shuttle to the park.

So cool! 

Tickets in hand we headed through the gates.

Seeing the magical castle as we walked down main street.

The rest of the Matterhorn...

We started in Tomorrowland and had to ride something!  So we jumped in line and rode the Astro Orbiter while we waited for everyone else to find us. 

Next up was Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters.  This was a ton of fun; you are thrown into a big video game and help to shoot Zorb's evil aliens.  They take your picture and you get your score at the end.  Eli was the big winner from our group!

Next was the Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage.  While waiting in line we could watch the subs cruise by and they also had a buoy set up with the seagulls from Nemo saying "Mine, mine, mine." (Lucky us, this is one thing we are still randomly hearing from the toy room!)

We had fun "diving down" to see scenes from Nemo. 

Then we headed over for our 1st big ride, Space Mountain.  We utilized the Fast Pass system while we were at Disney, and I honestly don't know how you could do it any other way.  We jetted to the front of lines when our Fast Pass was ready and it made our day awesome!  

Space Mountain was fun, and fast, and a bit scary.  Tyler wanted to ride it again right away, I think Cody and I could pass! 

Uncle Stu playing with the boys and the giant water ball.  They loved sharing their day with him, and he was quite the trooper. 

Next we headed over to Adventureland.  As we were walking through there was no line for the Enchanted Tiki Room, so we went right in and the show started 5 minutes later.  That was a lot of fun, the boys really like the songs and we had a few minutes to sit and relax.  

Jungle Cruise was next on our list.  The tour guides completely make this ride, ours was awesome, and had great timing with her delivery and jokes. 

We took our only split from the boys after the cruise so that we could ride Indiana Jones.  Tyler was a bit too short this trip, so we decided it would be easier if neither of them rode it.  So they went off with Grandma and Grandpa to explore Tarzan's Treehouse.  They also visited the Sailing Ship Columbia pirate ship.  They said they had fun, but didn't report much else. 

Indiana Jones was fun for the bigger kids.  Not a favorite ride, but good effects and story.  

This brought us to lunch time so we jumped onto the Monorail and headed into Downtown Disney to have a sit down lunch and take a break.  We were able to ride in the very back of the Monorail for great views!

We walked around a bit and decided to try the Rainforest Cafe for lunch.  I've heard of them and have wanted to try it, but have never been around one.  The restaurant is very cool with animal statues everywhere and rain forest plants, aquariums and jungle sounds.  Every so often a thunderstorm erupts with lights and sounds and some of the statues move.  The food wasn't worth the price however, so we probably won't go back again.

We also had a chance to look at a few of the shops.  One cool place was Build a Ride, where you can build a custom model car and for more money you can turn it into a remote control.  They also had a LEGO store, so cool to see all the different series and the life size LEGO statues.  We jumped back onto the Monorail for more Disney fun!

We headed for Critter Country so we could meet up with Virginia and Eli for Splash Mountain.  This was Tyler's favorite ride!  Cody had fun as well, but he was in the very front and was soaked for a good hour later.  I loved going through the story and the small falls.  You can't see Ty in the picture, but he's in the very back with Eli, his hand are also up and he's squealing with joy "this is Awesome! "

We split again and went for the tamer Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh.  The boys loved it, going through a book and seeing the story as we rode through. 

Then we headed over to New Orleans Square for Pirates of the Caribbean.  Stu kept the boys busy with many games of rock, paper, scissors while waiting in lines. 

Pirates was a lot of fun, once again, I love the stories.  They have updated this with some new Jack Sparrow parts with Johnny Depp added in, made it so we recognized some of the characters.


We headed over to Frontierland next and met back up with Grandma and Grandpa for the Thunder Mountain Railroad.  Ty was once again a huge fan, Cody had a good time as well, but we're starting to realized he might not be a huge coaster buff.

It was time from Fantasyland and It's a Small World.  The ride is beautiful, and a nice break from walking with a/c to boot! 

It's fun to see a lot of the favorite characters in doll for and hearing the different languages and native instruments.

Mad Tea Party was next on the list, somehow we folded Stu up enough to ride! 

Meeting up again with Virginia and Eli, we headed for Dumbo the Flying Elephant. 

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Virginia and Ty...

Eli & Cody...

Keith and I...

Mr. Toad's Wild Ride took us for a fun and crazy drive.

There were a few more rides in Fantasyland I had hoped to hit, but we ran out of time, next trip I guess....

We headed up to Main Street to catch Mickey's Soundsational Parade. 

This was a fun way to see some of our favorite characters in one spot!

Tyler really liked Tangled, so she's his favorite princess.

Tinkerbell has a lot of rolls at Disney as we found out later in the evening. 

I think after the parade we went through the Haunted Mansion to see the funny ghosts, the boys were okay with this one, reminding them it was all pretend.  Some of it was a bit scary.

This brought us to dinner time.  We all gathered out in Downtown Disney for a Mexican dinner.  It was wonderful and a much needed break!

We hustled back into the park so we could find a spot to watch the Fireworks.  This was such an awesome display . Our favorite part was seeing Tinkerbell flying by on the high wire to lead us through the show.

After the fireworks we headed over to the Rivers of America to get a spot for the Fantasmic Laser Show.  We had a pretty good place to watch, but that also meant sitting and waiting for almost 30 minutes.  Unfortunately this happened...

which was the conclusion of Ty's day at Disney!

So the rest of us relaxed and waited for the show.  It was beyond awesome!  Mickey guided us through the show of lasers, lights and fireworks.  We saw the characters come by again on river barges, a pirate fight on the big ship with Peter Pan and Hook, dragons and alligators in the water, and so much more.  Sooo glad we saw it!  

Keith and I went with Grandma and Tyler slowly making our way out of the park.  We hadn't had much time to smash pennies through out the day, so we took time and stopped at some of the places I had marked on my list.  Then stopped at a couple of shops so we could get shirts and light sabers for the boys.  Then we made our way out to the parking lot to wait in the RV for the rest of the group.  

Cody went with Grandpa, Eli, Virginia and Stu to try and catch Star Tours.  They lucked out and were able to get in, said it was awesome!  

We got there at around 8am and were back at camp around 1am, such an awesome day!  We can not wait to go back again and hit the few things we missed and take more time to see the shows and shops in each area.  And yes, we will go for 3 or more days next time! 

Family Trip Day 3...

While in Big Bear Lake we camped at the Sorrano Campground.   It was a wonderful place and we hope to go another time to stay longer.  Large campsites, pretty quite, nice facilities and great staff.

Our first adventure of the day was to ride the sky chair up to the top of the mountain for lunch.  We had mixed signs as to whether or not the cafe on top was open, so we packed up a picnic to be safe.  

It was open, but the picnic did us just fine. 

 Going up! 

 Seeing all the snow machines they use.  One sign said that when the temperature drops to the right place they can go from bare mountain to skiing in 2 days & nights.  They use water from the lake to make real snow, and have an intricate draining system that collects the snow melt and channels it back to the lake.  Talk about recycling! 

 One of the many runs...

 At the top looking around...

 During the summer this is a mountain bikers paradise.  We saw a lot of different people going up the chair with their bikes.  The bike runs are different than the ski runs, so we couldn't watch them go down, but they looked geared out for some serious fun.

View of the lake on our way down.

 Our next adventure was to go ride the alpine slides.  It's been years since I've been to the ones in Colorado, so this was high on my list for this trip.  Nothing like a big fiberglass slide down a mountain!

Ty was too little to reach the brake all the way, so he rode with me.  We had a blast zooming down as fast as we could! 

 Keith...

 Cody was just tall enough to ride alone, although he probably would have been better with an adult as he couldn't actually push the handle hard enough to get all the way off the brake. 

 Virginia and Eli coming off, reporting back that it was a lot more fun than they had expected. 

We also rode Go-Karts here as well, on a very small track, but the boys liked it.

After some fun we loaded up in the cars and headed to Anaheim.  We were lucky enough to hit a bit of LA traffic, but it wasn't as awful as it could have been.  Camp was okay here, mainly set up for RV's.  So we set the tents up on the concrete slabs.  The boys were stoked because there was a pool and we were right across from it!  They had fun getting a swim in before dinner.

We hustled them to bed as Disney was up the next day.  From our camp you could see the top of the Matterhorn, but if you didn't know what it was, you wouldn't have known it was there.  We were also able to see and hear the 9:30 fireworks show that Disney puts on.  Tyler slept through it, but Cody woke up and had a hard time getting back to sleep.  Being the good parents we are, we lied and told him we didn't know what the big bangs were or what they were for.

I was almost too excited to sleep!

Family Trip Day #1 & 2...

We started off on our trek mid morning on Saturday, loading all the middle and youngest generations into the 15 passenger church van.  With 2 seats removed we almost had enough room for everyone and one pup. 

 We stopped for lunch in Chowchilla, finding a nice little park to play at.

 Including a closed in baseball dugout for Guinness to run and catch a few balls.

 Our first destination was Sequoia National Park and the Lodgepole Campground.  Once we hit the hills, it was a beautiful drive, seeing hang gliders in the sky and patches snow on the ground.  

 We made it to camp and found we were just across the road from the creek/river. 

 We liked this campground, with the exception of having to bear box anything that might smell tasty.  We were told that bears were spotted at least once a day, but hoped this was the standard line to make sure people packed their things away.   

 The boys were able to play frisbee in camp.  They also had their one night of playing with the walkie-talkies that Grandpa had brought.  Tyler would call and tell us where he was about every 3 steps, so those were put away rather quickly. 

 Our first campfire of the trip = smore's! 

 In the morning we packed up camp and headed over for a hike on the Tokopah Falls Trail.  

Crossing the bridge to find the trail head...

 It was a fairly easy trail, with lots of cool rock stairs through out and beautiful views.

 Virginia & Eli...

 Showing us muscles and how strong they were to hold up the tree!

 Ooooo, Ahhhh...

 We saw a deer while hiking, then we saw a bear.  He ignored us and we walked right on by leaving him be.  Deciding that it was nice to see it today as we were leaving camp and not the night before when we still had to sleep there.We also saw another one on our drive out of camp. 

 We were working our way up the trail in hopes of seeing some big falls that would feed the river.  We had many stops along the way to watch the power of the water.

 Every once in a while you would remember to look up and see this...

 We went up to what we think was pretty close to the end of the trail, seeing lots of little falls along the way. 

 Never seeing the big falls we were expecting for the river.  The trail was sort of washed out towards the top, so there may have been more to see.  We had a nice hike nonetheless.

 We had a bite to eat it was time to get on the road to Big Bear Lake for our next camping destination.  The drive out of Sequoia was equally as beautiful as the drive in, seeing a lot of redwoods and a few more mini water falls.  Once we were out of the forest it was a bit boring, but we did get to see windmill power fields, go over some roads that felt like roller coasters, and see some cool train tunnels.

We rolled into camp around 7:30, ending our longest driving day of the trip. 

Tyler had some funnies to throw at us as well for the day.  At one point during our hike he saw a tree that had a couple of streaks of red and he was said it was trying to turn into a redwood. 

As we were driving and started in the forest and then had driven out of it.  He was asking if our next camp was in the forest.  We didn't know for sure.  He told us that it would be " all treed up" when we go there. 

End of the School Year...

Yep, I'm just as excited, if not more so, that school is out for summer! 

(If reading on Blogger, click the boys' pics to see the full size)

Here's Tyler's 1st and Last day pics...

 Cody's class had a small pizza party to say goodbye to 1st grade.

Here's his 1st and last day pics...

Flowers for Cody's teacher...

 Ribbon weaved jar to keep...

 We also gave her a necklace, the one with the multi-colored flowers, and a gift card for Barnes and Noble.

Let the summer fun begin!

Sports Day and the Burrowing Bunny....

Tuesday at Cody's school was the Sports day (aka: field day), so Ty and I went to help.  

Lined up with his team from class.  Each class was asked to wear specific colors to help keep everyone separate during the games.

 There were three races and a ball throw, then it was over. 

 Not uber impressed with the whole deal, it was rushed and squished.  Cody had a pretty good time though, so that's what counts! 

In other news, we Bun is burrowing again.  We found her whole yesterday and it's a curious thing.  

Standing on the corner of the porch, you can see the trail she's made. 

 There it is looking in on it, including the dirt trail leading up to it. 

 Just to get an idea of the depth, that's a standard grill scraper, all the way inside. 

 She let me watch her dig for a bit, but was done when I went in to get the camera.  

She's filthy! 

 Another random note, I think she's turning more brown than she was to start off with.

It's really pretty...

 Trying to clean herself from her morning activities. 

 She should be snowy white like Beau...

I spent the later part of the afternoon watching her work.  She stopped digging out the hole (1 1/2 body lengths deep!) and started digging at the path that lead to the hole.  After digging at it a while, she would turn around and push and pack the dirt into her hole.  

She worked on it all day, then was done and hasn't touched it again.